At what point can you hear a Fast or Slow Table?

C'mon Monk, aren't you being a bit hypercritical? After all - as all REAL JAZZ LISTENERS know, there is no such thing as as an absolutely correct pitch. You should be able to play KOB in any key whether it's a half step down or two steps up!

Monk: Gosh, after more than 40 years of listening seriously to jazz, collecting more than 5000 recordings, and teaching a college course in jazz appreciation, I thought I WAS a REAL JAZZ LISTENER. Don't know how I could have been so ignorant about the off-pitch on "Kind of Blue", but I apparently had company -- none of the other REAL JAZZ LISTENERS that I knew were aware of the recording anomaly until around 1990. But I guess we're NOT REAL JAZZ LISTENERS up here in the Pacific Northwest...

A fast or slow turntable will affect the pitch of the music. The accepted standard today is 440 Hz for middle A, but there has been wide variation throughout history, and even some variation today.

See http://www.uk-piano.org/history/pitch.html.

There was an international squbble once about the pitch of the Vienna Opera. It was too high, said many Divas, and bad for their voices. Musicians know that tuning just a bit high makes the music sound more exciting, and some do it on purpose.

My ex-wife is an opera singer with perfect pitch. She would walk into a room with anything playing (TT, CD, and of course live music), and the first thing she would do is start to hum with her hands cupped over one or both ears. I do not think she could help it, the music had to be right on, or it drove her nuts.

I however, am not cursed that way. It once took me a few minutes to realize that the belt had slipped on the TT and I was listening to a 33 at 45 rpm. The violin was "just not right". It might be a "right brain - left brain" thing.

Dave

I would worry about a .37% speed drop due to stylus drag, if it really is the case. This because stylus drag - and more importantly the torque on the platter - depends on the amount of groove modulation and the position of the stylus with respect to the center of the record. It is therefore likely that the speed drop will actually vary - and therefore cause wow - depending on the music being played.

But, what do I really know - I use a quartz oscillator locked direct drive...

- Harald

sdcampbell, as a young musical student, it was always known that side 1 of KOB was a 1/2 step up. And we were made to transcribe them, and play them that way! It wasn't easy - but later on, on gigs and jam sessions we'd play it that way and mess with others sitting in. MAybe YOU didn't know it, but every real jazz listener I knew knew it was a half step fast. The people at Columbia and later SONY probably couldn't have cared less,....

And as to agent193's question, It might sound just a hair flat, but probably not noticible (the .37% or .0037 variance). Luckily I am not cursed with perfect pitch, just really good relative pitch. So I actually dig those inbetweeen moments...... I wouldn't sweat it, do YOU hear it is the real question? I hear it in my old REGA 3 when it runs fast. But my now Basis just sings along rock solid....

I would imagine it is well within the tolerences for many manufactures of Turntables, you think?

People with very acute hearing and sense of pitch might be able to detect a variance of more than a few percent either way, assuming the deviation is constant, but the majority of listeners will probably not hear this small a difference. However, a substantial number of listeners will be able to detect fluctuations such wow and/or flutter. I'm reminded of Miles Davis great album, "Kind of Blue", which was recorded in 1959 with a tape machine that ran just a hair slow (thereby altering the pitch ever so slightly). This wasn't detected until the recording was remastered in the mid-1990's, after tens of thousands of people had listened to the recording for some 35 years.

So, the speed variation in your turntable probably isn't anything to worry about.

It would depend on the individual.I can hear when there is a more than 2% deviation in speed having compared recorded samples from vinyl on a computer.The piano is a good indicator of speed response,so play some piano records and see what you think.